He thought about the boy's hands in his pocket, and how they were shaking.
"Son," Hollis said, gently. "Did they see you come inside?"
The boy's face did something then. It did not crumple, exactly. It held. But it held the way a dam holds when the water is already coming over the top, and in the boy's eyes Hollis saw the answer before the boy said anything at all, and it was the same answer he'd have seen in his own eyes in a mirror, fifty years ago, the night his father came home from the Legion with his belt already off.
"I don't know," the boy whispered. "I was out by the ice machine. When you came. I was out there and I saw the truck, and I came in. I don't know if they saw." His chin was trembling. "They didn't follow you?"
"No," Hollis said. "I don't think they did."
He watched the boy hear it. It was a terrible thing to watch. The boy had built himself a little shelter out of that sentence, the men who followed your motorcycle, a shelter where the danger belonged to the big scary stranger in the leather vest, who looked like he could handle it, and Hollis had just knocked the shelter down with one question.
"Sit down," Hollis said. "Right here. Across from me. Don't look out the window. Look at me."
The boy sat. He looked at Hollis. He had gray eyes, like river ice.
"What's your name?"
"Toby."
"Toby what?"
"Marsh."
"That your mom? Renée?"
He nodded.